With My Team Actually Winning, I'm A Mess

Get Serious!

November 13, 2006|By TONY GABRIELE Daily Press

Normally, I am a happy man. Sunny of disposition and blithe of spirit, I go about with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. If you hear someone warbling "When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along," it's me.

But not lately. Lately I have been nervous, jumpy, fretful and generally stressed out. I have fallen victim to the malady that so many of my friends suffer from.

I am suffering from BCS. That's Bowl Concern Syndrome.

This is the affliction suffered by people who agonize over whether their college's football team will get into a big-time bowl game.

For years I watched as friends -- for example, people who had gone to Virginia Tech -- went though this trial. Sure, at a casual glance they appeared happy, rejoicing that their alma mater had a perennially successful football team. But deep down, they could never relax.

Every Saturday during football season they'd be apprehensive, knowing that a losing game could derail the Hokies' march to one of the prestigious New Year's Day bowl games. Every Monday, they'd stew over the announcement of the revised rankings in the national polls. "What! Notre Dame's ranked ahead of us? An outrage!" you'd hear them bellow.

But not me. That's because I had the good fortune to have attended Rutgers.

Rutgers' role in the Big East Conference was to assure that every other team in the conference would win at least one football game.

That's what made it beloved, mainly at all those other college campuses.

It was very restful. Every year, you knew by the end of September that Rutgers wasn't going to any bowl game, so you could relax. Some years, you knew by the beginning of September.

Yes, I'd pick up the paper every Sunday to see what score Rutgers had lost by, and I would feel a momentary pang. But then I could get on with my life.

Tech was in the same conference back then, so every year the two schools would play each other. And every year, Tech would whomp Rutgers by something like 56 to 3. Tech could pull its whole team off the field in the fourth quarter, and Rutgers would still fall further behind. It was reassuring, the one constant in a changing world.

Then something eerie happened. Rutgers football started to get good.

Last year, the Scarlet Knights went to their first bowl game in decades. True, it was one of those lower-tier bowls you're not sure you've heard of before, the Preparation H Bowl, or the Popeil Pocket Fisherman Bowl, or some such. But it was a bowl game.

And my restful, stress-free autumns were a thing of the past.

This year, as of last week, Rutgers was undefeated. No. 15 in the national rankings. Ranked AHEAD of Tech. That sound you heard was Satan, scraping the ice off the windshield of his Hummer.

So it was in a state of extreme agitation that I sat in front of the TV on Thursday night, to watch undefeated Rutgers play undefeated No. 3 Louisville.

It was nerve-racking. I hadn't slept well, suffering nightmares in which Rutgers' star ball-carrier, Ray Rice, get stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and missed the game.

I twitched, I fidgeted. I sang "On the banks of the old Raritan" over and over, compulsively. I bit my fingernails. Then I bit my toenails.

Well, you know what happened. Rutgers pulled out a come-from-behind, last-minute, upset victory. It was amazing. It was glorious.

I'm a wreck.

I am another helpless victim of BCS addiction. I toss and turn at night, fretting: "Will they let down against Cincinnati next week? Will West Virginia knock them off in the final game? Will they totally collapse and have to settle for the Apply Directly To Forehead Bowl?"

For all I know, this morning I'll be bellowing, "What? Auburn's ranked ahead of us? An outrage!"

Rutgers probably will be good next year, too. Maybe this is just the beginning of a perennially good football program. I could be doomed to agonizing autumns.

You don't suppose I could pretend I went to Duke?

Tony Gabriele can be reached at 247-4786 or tgabriele@dailypress.com. *